Going to try and put all this in while its still fresh
We moved into an apartment in set of old buildings (each apartment was its own floor, there were 8 floors and 5-6 buildings. No pets or animals just the fam. Came home one day to the plaster peeling off the walls. The neighbor in the 7th floor apartment next to ours was hanging out his window and motioning me to open mine. I learned from him the floor above ours had a water leak. This particular neighbor was always busybodying, lived alone and would yell out his window at folks on the street so our kids had nicknamed him "squidward".
The super was having major surgery so I figured we were out of luck and braced for the worst. However the water problem got fixed, I learned from squidward that the owner of the complex sent an emergency plumber. I started picking at the loose plaster to clean it up, and as it fell away it revealed a coded message painted on the walls years ago.
I pulled as much of the plaster as I dared and wrote everything down that I found in the different rooms on different pieces of paper. Apart from "Complete the Circle", I wasn't able to make sense of it. But LLK took the pages, folded them in half, and then bent them in on each other and they interlocked, one letter at a time from each room Scytale-style. (this would have been easy to figure out IRL but you know, dreams) the message said "FINDTHEROCKSCOLLEGETRANSCRIPT".
I went looking online and didn't see anything, meanwhile I tried to tackle the problem from the other end by identifying the owner. There was a shiny plaque on all the buildings that said "These historic apartments were erected in 1879 by Adam A. Pilchard and Neil Savoy" but I couldn't find any record of who owned it after that. Asking neighbors, we determined the owner must live in the complex because broken got fixed even when the super was out, even in the middle of the night. Dwayne Johnson's college transcript was not something you could just request from the school without cause. Now we were really curious what it might contain.
When V learned that I was looking for The Rock's college transcript she said "At school they gave us his college transcript as some inspirational thing." She had a USB key with a PDF of the rock's college transcript on it. I printed out a physical copy and tried to understand what I was looking at. There was another PDF as well, which contained a phone number, a name, and the phrase "Waterford Trust".
I started looking at the Rock's letter grades and trying to figure out if there was a code there somehow. Meanwhile I called this number and asked for the person, who was an account manager and the trustee of the Waterford Trust. "Are you WiL?" "The grantor of the trust has provided funding for your two daughters to attend the college of their choice. Said grantor has chosen to remain anonymous."
Now I was really very curious indeed who the message author might be. Looking again at the transcript, there was a copy of the application essay, which included the line, "My college journey would not have been possible without the generous support and mentorship of Neil Savoy III". I looked up Neil Savoy III online and there was a picture of our neighbor, Squidward. He'd been next door the whole time. He was always looking out his windows, not to look for reasons to yell at folks, but to make sure their needs were taken care of.
I looked for him but he wasn't in his apartment. I finally saw him down on the street with several other neighbors all talking to the super, who'd just got back from his surgery. He turned to look up at me, saw me looking down at him, knew I knew, and smiled. Then in a shimmer of light, he disappeared from view. I woke up crying.